One of cinema’s most influential creators just planted his flag firmly on the pro-AI side. In a wide-ranging interview tied to the opening of his Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, George Lucas said artificial intelligence is “the future” of moviemaking and that fighting it is pointless: “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”
Lucas, 82, argued that AI simply “means it’s much easier for us to make movies,” and compared the resistance to insisting on a horse and buggy after the automobile arrived. It’s a striking stance from the filmmaker who spent decades pouring money into practical and digital effects at ILM, and it lands at a moment when much of Hollywood, along with a lot of working photographers and videographers, sees generative AI as a threat to their livelihoods rather than a tool.
He wasn’t blind to the downsides. Lucas acknowledged the risks but insisted there are solutions, floating the idea that “if you want AI that tells you when something is fake and where it came from, AI can do that.” Whether that reads as reassuring or naive probably depends on how your own corner of the industry is holding up. Either way, when the person who built one of the most valuable effects pipelines in film history says the fight is already over, it’s worth hearing him out, even if you disagree.
Photo of George Lucas by Kevin Payravi, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
